


Live to Love Another Day

by JaqofSpades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Kisses Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:16:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4525182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of wars, and battles, and not just the type that leave a man broken and bloody on a woman's doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live to Love Another Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merideath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merideath/gifts).



She knocks, and knocks, and knocks, but he never answers the door. Still not back, rationality insists. Wounded and sore, worry niggles. Her anxiety slams straight for the jugular: he’s ignoring you, it taunts. Thinks you’re downright annoying.

Darcy stomps back down the hall without even bothering to give that thought the oxygen it needs to breathe. She’s pretty sure Steve doesn’t think she’s annoying. He’d kissed her, seventeen hours ago, guiding her away from the others with a gentle hand on her back, and then pulling her into him once they’d found a quiet corner.

After they’d both been able to breath again, after the taste and feel of him had faded enough to let conscious thought creep back in, the reality of what they were doing had come crashing in. She didn’t owe him a goddamn thing - nothing beyond the usual ‘he’s Captain America, risking his life for the whole world bullshit’ anyway - but one really remarkable kiss and she’s letting him treat her like, like ...

He actually cares. 

“I want you safe,” he’d said quietly, hands braced on her hips as he refused to allow her to look away. “I know you want to help, want to fight, but … you’re needed on the ground. Get the civilians away from the battle field. Make sure we can all hear each other and co-ordinate properly. It’ll help keep us alive, Darcy.”

And she’s not Jane, who can lose herself in three rival theorems that might prove useful in sealing the portal between Earth and wherever the hell these freakshow types came from. She’s not Pepper, dripping cool while simultaneously sweeping up trades on the tumbling stockmarket and checking the Tower’s lockdown specs. She’s just Darcy, big mouth and poor impulse control and a lead weight in her belly as she waits, useless, for her sorta-maybe boyfriend to limp in from battling the Big Bad.

She’s a perfectly ordinary woman drifting aimlessly among the brilliant and superhuman. But if there’s one thing Darcy Lewis knows how to do, it’s to show up. Hang in there. Fight for what she wants, and as ridiculous, as over-ambitious and hopelessly optimistic as it sounds? She wants him.

Steve Rogers. Captain America, too, but mostly Steve. She’s not going to lie – she’d wanted to hand him her panties the first time she’d seen him in SHIELD’s high-tech version of the iconic uniform – but she’d met an actual Norse God by then, so it wasn’t just about being starstruck. Or lust-dumb, because – well, Thor. And it was totally weird, because the cleancut, all-American type had never really been her thing but it turns out there’s just something about its actual embodiment.

She thinks it might be Steve.

The way he manages to disguise just how dangerous he is when no one else even bothers; the easy sweetness that seems to linger under the surface. Her heart contracts remembering how they had met – a local rescue mission. A seven-year-old running away from his mother and straight up to the top of a handy tree. 

She had been reading a book in the shade and trying to pretend she wasn’t spying on sweaty, t-shirt clad Steve as he did his daily sprints. She’d listened with increasing annoyance as the little shyster hoodwinked him completely, but she’ll never forget the hopeful little smile he had used in his bid to coax the kid down. Then she’d stomped up and laid down some facts of life for the little brat. He practically abseiled outta there.

“Brothers,” she’d shrugged, but Steve had refused to let her minimise it, lecturing about “negotiation skills” and “incident management” all the way back to Stark Tower.

She’d kept her mouth shut until he mentioned making a report to Director Fury.  
“I don’t work for SHIELD,” she’d hissed, backing him up against the wall of the elevator, “and that man still owes me an Ipod.” 

He’d stuttered his apologies, and then glanced down to where her boobs were threatening to leap out of the peasant neckline of the blouse she was wearing. His cheeks had pinked as he licked his lips, and fuck, Darcy reeled. Captain America was checking out her cleavage.

She tried to feel guilty, but the fierce glow of satisfaction had doubled when it became obvious he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

“They’re real, too,” she’d offered, and she didn’t miss the moment of puzzlement before his jaw dropped.

The elevator had announced their floor not a moment too soon, but three hours later she’s walking Jane through the basics of work-life balance when her phone dings.

“You promise to be quite the education, Miss Lewis,” the text said.

“Just u W8,” she had sent back, and he’s still making her laugh, every single day.

Even today, the memories enough to leave a smile is tugging at her mouth even as she stomps through the halls of Stark Tower looking for the idiot. Thor has been back nearly an hour – he’d come crashing into the Lab, the look in his eyes making Jane drop the calculations she’d been rechecking – and they’re a team, a unit, right? Steve’s not still out there, not without someone to have his back, not with Thor upstairs breaking Jane’s furniture and Tony logged in up top and Clint and Tasha curled up together in the sauna. Maybe Bruce and Steve …

Steve is in front of her door.

Slumped against it, fist still raised, forehead hard against the wood. His shield lies next to him, somehow shining a little less bright than it did this morning, and his uniform, the one they’d scratched and burnt and tried to rip for show, is mere tatters. Everywhere she looks, he is burned, or cut, or worse.

She tries to say his name, but shock refuses to let the sounds leave her throat. Maybe it’s her thundering heart that alerts him; maybe his soldier’s sensitivity to even the quietest of moving feet. Or maybe he doesn’t know she’s there at all when her name erupts from his throat, a forlorn thing full of pain and need.

“I’m here,” she says, and panic blinds her for a moment. He needs her, and there’s no part of her willing to hold back, no cold rationality lurking behind the earth mother guise that is as comfortable for her as Captain America is for him. She doesn’t know what she’s promising, or for how long, but the truly terrifying thing is that she doesn’t care.

 _She doesn’t care_ , she marvels, stepping in close behind him, her sneaker-clad feet sliding in between his booted ones, her head coming to rest in the centre of his broad back. Even the bunching muscles can’t disguise the vulnerability of his shoulder blades, hunched high and together, his soldier’s stance just one more piece of collateral damage in this ugly war they’ve chosen to fight.

Darcy lays her lips there, and feels the skin shift under her mouth. Puckers them in the tiniest of kisses, and smiles as his muscles twitch, a wave of tension leaving him in one long, shuddery sigh. Presses closer, finds more skin to worship, makes him breathe faster at the skim of fingers over his hips, the bulge of his thighs, the undulations of his belly. Her lips never leave him even as her hands explore, butterfly kisses that are as innocent as her hands are bold, tiny little motions that say “I’m glad you’re here,” and “I’m so happy you survived,” and “you can let go now”.

She doesn’t move until the moment she feels the battle leave him, feels him start to groan and twist under her touches, start to buck into her hand.

“You need a bath,” she says, and he nods and moves back to let her open the door. It’s as much personal space as they allow each other for hours to come, Darcy reaching up to strip him of the remnants of his uniform as the tub fills with water; Steve settling into the warmth with a long groan that’s barely left his body before he’s holding out his arms for her to climb in.

She smiles as she strips herself, not even bothering to wish she’d worn a sexier bra or less holey panties. He’s not here for a seduction. This is about getting what they need.

She needs him safe, and she needs him whole, and she needs him hers. Everything else – including that seduction, because that is _so_ very happening – can wait until they’ve claimed each other, created peace, averted chaos.

And lived to love another day.


End file.
